


Man in the Woods

by BloodandFat



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: A look into Daniel's take over of Campbell, And David's relationship with Max, Ascension, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, But with drugs and violence, M/M, and easter eggs, and how the kid comes to understand the world and why it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-26 10:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13233471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodandFat/pseuds/BloodandFat
Summary: Max struggles to understand why the world is the way that it is and David's philosophy helps him along the way





	1. Tomorrow Will Be Different

**Author's Note:**

> Daniel AU requested by @restlessbeautys whattup

The first time I met David, with his fucking grabby hands and genuine smile, I decided I hated him. The happy man’s neurosis didn’t make any sense to me, and that was always a bad thing. The second time I met him, I decided that he was a fool and that I needed to stay out of his way. He was delusional and his kind words made me feel something relative to hurt. The third time I met him, I was lost and delusional enough to tell him what I wanted in life, and in return, David painted a future for me, the kind of detailed and logical future only adults could conjure, a future where my father and sex and political corruption did not exist, and it all made perfect sense then. We were all under the stars, spaced out and lying in sleeping bags, and in that moment David made perfect sense to me. 

_“Live life by your own design, Max.”_

Life had been so nice then, once I understood the camp man’s happiness and why he was the way he was. Everything seemed to glow, because his view on life was wonderful, yet limited, and only applicable on controllable campgrounds. Life didn’t hit so hard here.

_“Your life is what you make of it, kiddo. There is no one in the world keeping count of how many times you mess up. ”_

But by the end of the summer, David had fabricated another partner, a near duplicate of himself, Daniel, a man who could dress, look, and act like David, but couldn't talk like him. At all.

If David could bring the heaven, he could shatter it too. That was the way the world worked. 

A harsh autumn seemed to hit the moment the bleached man began living with us, and it was more the sudden quiet and the freezing cold that defined the season rather than the reddening leaves. The gorgeous glow that David had given life seemed to rust, and the colors seemed bleak.

_“Some of the most interesting people I know don’t know what to do with their lives. It's okay if you don't know what you want yet.”_

Maybe all I needed to do was talk to Daniel, to understand him the way I came to understand David. But every morning with him seemed to further drain the sky of its color and bleach the forest, and so I decided that maybe, I needed to talk to David instead. 

That morning, I woke up early so I could catch the counselor before he drowned in his day’s work and I was shocked I could see my breath. 

“Where are you going?” Neil asks drowsily from his cot, tossing a hand over his head. His hair looks sloppier than mines, which was really quite a feat. 

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.” I say. I pull a sweatshirt over the jersey shorts I'd slept in, quickly bolting for the mess hall where David would arrive soon to set up breakfast.

It’s darker inside than I'd expected. Weak sunlight filters in through the cracks in the wall as I squint against the dark, wrapping my arms around myself. I spot a light in the kitchen and I stumble down towards it. “David!” I call. _There’s something wrong_ , I want to say but when the blonde turns his head with a smile more monstrous than inviting, my initial thoughts evaporate.

“I— my bad.”

“All us white folk don’t look the same you know!” In his crooked smile, there’s an attempt at comfort. “I’m kidding.”

“My bad.” I repeat. I don’t know what to say.

While the man might’ve had an uncanny resemblance to the red-headed counselor at first glance, up close, he was distinguishably his own person. With flared nostrils and thick arched eyebrows, he could pass as handsome, but in a violently threatening way. “I didn’t expect any of the campers to be up this early. What are you doing here?”

"I was..." I can't think of a good excuse. "...waiting for you."

He looks sincerely flattered. “Oh Max, don’t worry. I’ll start the special camp activity that I promised soon. I know you’re excited. I would be.”

 _Sure_. “What are you making?” I ask, eyeing the slop he was mixing. It smelled overwhelmingly like gas, enough to water my eyes.

His eyes gleam. “You're going to have to wait your turn.” 

It’s far colder in this particular room, even colder than it seemed outside. Goosebumps rise on every visible inch of my skin. “Where’s David?” I ask bluntly. “Or Gwen?”

Daniel pauses to mix in a new ingredient. It smells sickeningly sweet. “Go wait outside, Max. I’ll join you. David’ll be back soon.”

I can still smell his work on my clothes, even after I’d backed out of the kitchen and out into the camp field. I stand under the faint sun rays, waiting for the sound of the other campers waking. I wondered if my anxiety about Daniel was more about my own paranoia rather than about anything the blonde man himself had actually _done._

I craved distraction from it all. 

_“Someday you will miss today.”  
“Fat chance, camp man.”_

When David comes up behind me, smiling with way too many teeth, he brings the autumn chill and the August woodsmoke smell along with him and the day seems a lot brighter. It was as if the only time I could ever recognize nature was if David was present in it. David was a basically the force of nature itself; widely encompassing and with way too many responsibilities and little humans dependent on him.

I wanted to talk to David about the other things in life. I wanted him to make sense of the world the way he made sense of nature, life, and camping. I wanted him to alleviate it all. 

But David was a broke man himself with too many kids already latched onto his lifeline. I wanted someone to come into my life and make it better, but the counselor didn’t have time for a needy pessimist, and in that way, I understood our relationship and preferred it that way.

“Max! Good to see you up so early!” 

“David.” I pull the bottom of my shorts as low as they’d go, suppressing a shiver, “Why the fuck it so _cold_?”

He looks concerned, “Are you sick, Max? It’s at least eighty today.”

“I— “ I blank. “Do you not feel it?”

David takes my hands and his fingers are icy too. “Let me take you back to your tent. I’ll call Gwen so we can get you a checkup.” 

He checks my forehead for fever and I shove his hands away. “There’s _ice_ on the floor, David! I can see my breath. How can you not feel it!”

The wooden doors open behind me and Daniel walks out with a covered bowl. His smile is wide but it looks more like a snarl to me. “David! Mind giving me a hand with this batch?”

“Oh Daniel, I think Max is sick. He’s freezing, he says.”

An eyebrow arches high. “Really? Well, that’s unexpected. Must’ve been the early breakfast he had. Might’ve gotten his hands on the popsicle rockets we had in the deep freezer.”

“I didn’t eat shit, white boy.”

“You were in the kitchen with me just now, no? Anyways, David, my arms are killing me. Give me a hand here, why don’t you.”

David grabs the bowl from the man's arms and thin streams of liquid slip from under the saran wrap. “What is it?” 

“Try it.”

David looks uneasily at the bowl. “I think I’ll take it back to our quarters first. Looks like it’s leaking.”

“And I’ll take care of Max. I know just the solution.”

David grins. “Thanks, co-counselor! I’ll split it with Gwen. And Max--” he bends down to my height with an expression of such concern, it halts any attempt at protest, “--you look absolutely awful. Go back to your tent, okay? Daniel’ll take care of you.”

I wasn’t even sure if I was properly lucid anymore. _Was I hallucinating the paranoia?_ Daniel takes my hand once David leaves and I snatch it back. “I’m not sick, Daniel, and if you force me to down any cough syrup I’ll vomit it back up.”

He laughs, mock tossing his wet mixing spoon, flicking drops at my sweatshirt. “You're really an item, huh? Where have you been all my life?”

I grimace, rubbing the stain with my sleeve. “For the first two-thirds, I wasn’t born yet.”

Daniel bends down to my height, producing a crisp handkerchief and raising the hem of my sweatshirt to wipe it for me. “Tell me, Max.” He smells like disinfectants. “Why don’t you like me?”

“I never said that.” I say archly.

“You don’t say a lot of things.” He says simply and I feel terrifyingly transparent for a moment. “And you don’t need to.” 

_There was no way David told him about--_ I take a deep breath and I’m appalled that my fear is visible. “Glad we’re on the same page then. I think you're fake as fuck.”

And the man’s face doesn't change at all. He reminded me of those isolated slaughterhouses in the countryside that we used to pass while driving, the ones with curtains and doors so you couldn’t see inside. “People aren’t what they appear to be.”

It’s so cold, my breath looks like cigarette smoke. _David wasn’t going to do shit,_ I realize. _We have to get out of here._

I nervously smile at the man, who was much too close at this point, and take a step back, “I’ve got to change my clothes. I’ll be right back.” And I dart towards the tents before he can reply. 

The first thing I see when I throw open the flaps is Neil lying on his back, completely still, with his eyes wide and his throat slit open like a wide red smile.

I don’t remember when I started screaming, but I did remember the arms that grabbed me right after. Daniel’s hand clamps over my mouth. “Shut _up_ , for fucks sake.” I sob unintelligibly as he grabs my arm and drags me out unto the dying field behind the cabins. When he throws me down on the moldy ground in front of him, my head smacks the side of the shed. His face is absolutely monstrous. 

“I wasn’t planning on this yet, but since you had to expedite everything--” He pins one of my arms behind my back and grabs the other. I don’t think I’d ever realized how much larger than myself the man was. He has an enormous syringe in one hand, filled with a golden-colored drug. 

“No, no, no, God, please--,” I don’t recognize my own voice. The grip on my wrists gets dangerously tighter.

“I heard you cry at night in your cabin when Gwen pretends not to hear you. I know what Gavin did to you. I know what your father did to you.”

With a roll of nausea, I realize I had completely misunderstood what the man wanted. I think going to choke. His smile wasn’t crooked, I notice now; it was disturbingly distorted, like those funhouse mirrors at amusement parts. The man reaches into his pocket and flicks out a large serrated carving knife. 

“I remember when I first chose this camp and had to read up on each of you,” he says. “I needed to understand where each of you were in terms of purity.” 

I remembered that time, too. I remembered that the only thing I wanted in life then was for someone to come into my life and make it better.

“I’m here to make it worse, Max.”

When Daniel releases one of my wrists to unbuckle his belt, I jab my elbow upwards and shove his chest up so that I can roll out from under him. I stumble to my feet and desperately grab the first weapon I see, unbelievably, a large shovel, from against the shed wall. I hold it up against him.

“S-stop.” I say, my voice jerking with the strain of not crying. “Don’t get any c-closer.” The weapon shakes in my hand.

There’s not a hint of worry in his dead blue eyes. “The entire forest is mines, Max. I am the forest as much as it is me.” 

The moment he takes a step forward, I pull the shovel over my shoulder and swing, but tears impair my aim and the weapon goes flying to his left. I let out a string of swear words, stumbling back unto the shed, and Daniel thrusts the knife at my face. I turn my head abruptly. The blade breaks against the wall.

I stumble out from under him and run as fast as I can towards the only place to go, the woods, and Daniel makes no attempt to stop me.


	2. Tomorrow Will Be the Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these two chapters should literally be one chapter but you can blame ao3 foR THIS

I run for what seems like forever, quickly losing my concept of time, and I feel like I'm back home, running a cross country meet on an endless trail. My muscles begin to constrict and cramp and I can’t feel my hands. My bowels feel like they've been flushed out with acid. I heave, gasping like I can’t get enough air, and then I’m crying, tears running down my face and down my neck as I pathetically continue to jog. I can’t remember the last time I’d cried, but I can't stop now that I’d started. I sob loudly into the empty forest as the red sun sets against the horizon, because it didn’t matter if Daniel could hear me, since the man would find me soon enough anyway. 

_I am the forest, Max._

I cry out as I hit a jagged root and fall right into the gritty cold dirt. 

_And I will find you._

Leaves dig into bloody knees as I pull myself up into a seating position, watching the sun cast everything in an array of orange and pink. 

My throat hurts from sobbing. 

The sky eventually matches the trees— it’s all a gorey red —and I sit there, pulling out the pebbles that’d embedded themselves in my arms and I watch the sky until the colors drain out of the clouds and my tears dry as a frozen mask on my face.

I was surprisingly glad it was night. If I couldn’t see anything, nor could anybody else. Leaning against a log, I pull my sweatshirt over my legs against the increasing chill and listen to the sound of what must’ve been a thousand night bugs and birds coming out to nest.

Whenever I used to have shit days, David would always repeat the same phrase to me-- _tomorrow will be better_ \--and while I hated it at first, I eventually began to internalize it and even look forward to it. I liked being able to anticipate something better. The days stopped blending together that way.

_Tomorrow will be better._

I used to blame my mom the most. It was easier to blame someone you could forgive rather than blame someone who was actually unforgivable. I hated her when she used to turn up her TV when she could hear me through the walls. But I couldn't help myself from Ioving her so much I thought I could die for her, but it was an empty promise because when she died days after my seventh birthday in a car crash, drunk out of her mind, I knew she wasn’t thinking of me.

_Tomorrow will be better._

I wanted to ask, sometimes, what was it about little boys with broken noses and rippable bodies that made them preferable over full-bodied women. Over women who didn’t scream in pain or bleed after the first inch, or cry all over their clothes. I wondered if I was allowed to ask that without some higher power throwing a stage four Frank Demir at me. 

Naturally, I was wary of the counselor’s interest in me the first time we met, and so I attempted to ward him off with disrespect and disinterest. But the camp man was a walking catharsis, carrying the delusion that he was the mom I never had, and there became a point in my life where camp was all that defined my life and David was the only real person in it. But summer only lasted three months and I knew that David's nonsensical optimism did not apply outside his realm of campe diem. 

David had to have been dead by now, I realize, and I vomit to my left until I’m dry-heaving.

_Tomorrow will be the same._

I’m on my feet before the sun rises, heading in whichever direction I believed the wind was blowing.

It’s not long before I notice the trees begin to thin out and the smell of salt permeate the air. The ground beneath me gradually sands until I break past the forest to meet a small coast. It was a gorgeous little beach, a place where we would often drive out to practice our fishing and diving skills, and for a moment, I heat up with joy and choke out a laugh, the sound echoing across the barren strip. I used to despise coming here, but now I’m feverish with hope and anticipation. _This was my way out_. I begin searching immediately for canoes, boats, or rafts, but the longer I look, the more apparent it became that I was on the wrong side of the lake: the place looked like it hadn’t been walked on in years. I tiredly begin to walk the coast, which I could see go on for miles without end, searching for the tourist section.

I had always so spitefully opposed any of David’s activities that I was never able to appreciate the beauty of the place. White-capped waves heave to the shore with rocks and driftwood decorating the sand, their surfaces bleached bone-white in the salty waves. 

It’s one of those winter days where the sky is so clear you can look up for miles. It’s so blue and the clouds are powder-pink and the sun fills up the whole sky.

__

_“You know, Max, there’s a way to get good at life.” It was our group’s first time on the beach, and David’s readying a fire._

__

_“Oh really, camp man? Your salary isn't indicative of that.”_

_He drops a match unto the pile of alcohol-soaked driftwood and the fire is a surreal blue-green. Because of the salt, he'd explained. It’s the only color in all of the night. “Some people live their entire lives without being passionate about something. Do not be that.”_

There’s a clearing ahead where the coast widens and relief floods me when I notice a single raft bobbing, tied to a post. I begin running, sprinting for the docks, when I see a tall figure, facing the ocean, move. I freeze until I recognize the painfully familiar lanky limbs, camp uniform, and tangled red hair, packing the float with supplies. The relief is so sharp, I feel like I’m suffocating on it. I stumble forward, knees weak, and I manage a _David_ so choked it’s barely a word, but it’s only after I speak do I finally notice the second figure standing near the trees.

“Why, hello _Max_.” The cultist says, smiling. “You’re right on time.”

I freeze in utter terror. David turns to face us with a wide distorted smile and his pupils blown wide. 

Shakily, I take a step back, desperately willing myself to run, but Daniel grabs me by my wrists and wrenches me back.

“What do you want!” I jerk against his hold but his grip is inescapable. 

He pulls out a ziptie with from his pocket and locks my wrists together. “The mouth. You must’ve puked already.”

I begin sobbing angrily, each breath hitching in my throat, and the man wraps a hand around me in what could've been a comforting embrace had he not been unzipping his pants with his other hand. “You know exactly why I can’t purify you, Max. You've been ruined already. This isn’t my fault.”

“No, no, no--”

“Fucking him won’t make him any purer, Daniel,” David says suddenly, approaching us. His head is tilted and his is face fanatical. “And you’d promised the higher lord you’d ascend everyone.”

“Not everyone’s salvageable, _David_.” For the first time, the cultist’s not smiling.

“The galactic confederacy has never turned down a child.”

Daniel pulls me back and looks me over. “Zeemog will not accept him.”

“You cannot speak for Zeemog, Daniel. That’s the law.”

His face is venomous, but there’s resignation there, too. “Do we have anything left?”

David holds up the same large syringe from before, filled to the brink with its sharp tip leaking. “Just enough,” he says and Daniel grabs it from him and takes my forearm.

“ _No!_ ” I desperately yank against his grip, trying to get away from the thick tip, and the man smacks me so hard I see white. Fresh blood smears over my nose and cheek. He cups a hand over my mouth.

“I can fuck you with my knife and let you bleed out here if you prefer,” Daniel says gently. “Or you can simply listen to what I say. I promise you my goal isn’t to kill you. Hurt you, maybe. But not kill.”

I try to nod, but the pressure from his hand makes it hard to move properly. 

David bends down beside us. The two look like demonic Siamese twins. “Maybe I should be the one to do it.” He takes the syringe, seeming completely oblivious to the other man’s growing aggravation. “Maybe I can help.” He pulls me out from under Daniel and draws the sleeve of my left hand back. “It’ll all be over soon, Max.” He tilts me forward so that my head rested on his shoulder and my forearm was stretched flat open.

I have never cried in front of David, but I’m sobbing like a bitch now, sloppily smearing tears over the man’s jacket and shaking violently when he runs a hand through my hair. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He says soothingly, and he almost sounds like counselor David again. “You’re going to be safe soon. Zeemog accepts all.”

Still, my forearm shakes so badly that every time he aligns the needle to my skin, it jerks back out. He pauses and moves back and I’m terrified he’s just going to stab it in.

“I was never happy in my life, Max.” David says softly, and he almost sounds lucid for a moment. “My life was complete shit, and I think the reason I liked you so much is because I saw myself in you.” His voice is so low, I feel it in my soul. “But everything is better now, and tomorrow, it will be for you too.”

Now that the glass syringe wasn’t held against the light but my skin, I could tell that the liquid wasn’t golden but purple. It leaks slightly from the top and smells toxic yet sweet. Like koolaid.

“Tell me if you see God, child.” says the bleached man, and David finally manages to bury the thick tip into the crease of my forearm. 

I begin to unsee.

He pushes the plunger in only a little bit, pausing to let my blood flush into the barrel and permeate the drug first before suddenly stabbing his thumb down and inserting the rest. There’s a momentary chill, but the pain never goes away.

“Tomorrow will be better, Max.”

All I wanted in life was someone to make the pain to go away, and in every junction, it had always been David. He was the mom I never had and I believed I could die for him. Whatever the camp man had ever told me had always stayed true, and it was in that way that I understood him. 

The bleached man puts his knife between my wrists and lacerates the ties. “Take a breath. I am your God now.”

_Tomorrow will be better._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I have a very specific idea of what I imagine Max's life outside camp to be, so I pretty much referenced the background of "Ways to Describe Children" in this

**Author's Note:**

> feedback is food for the soulz


End file.
